About True ‘Love & Other Drugs’

This story is about a young woman with early-onset Parkinson’s Disease, who fails to connect to anyone emotionally because she feels undeserving of love. Outwardly confident, she nursed self-pity secretly, with fear of being committed to and dumped later. She encounters a young man, who also fails to connect emotionally. Outwardly arrogant, he was also selfish, with fear of commitment.

Yet, they connected physically for casual sex. As their ‘one’-night stands became more frequent, he starts to care, despite his character. And she starts accepting being cared for, also despite her character. Life is already an unpredictable and fatal disease, that we can suddenly die of – unless liberated in time. With or without a debilitating disease, it remains uncertain how we will live and die.

Even if in the pink of health now, there is no guarantee that a terrible disease will not develop later, to ‘steal’ everything you love about a person – the mind, the form, the smile… This does not mean we should not care for one another at all, but that we need to evolve from lust conditioned by attachment to form to love less conditioned by anything. After all, deep down, we do want to care.

We need to accept one another as we are now, and as we are going to be. So what if some of us will need some others more? We can grow, from more selfish love to more selfless love, from conditional love of one to less conditional love of more. True love for all is the long-term pain relief and cure, not any other drugs. Without love, even a complete physical cure is but a heartless drug.